With a new festival director and new venue, the Chicago Underground FilmFestival is poised for its sixth annual event. With festival founder JayBliznick tackling personal film projects and a new job managing Chicago’sFine Arts Theater, longtime programmer Bryan Wendorf has assumed the topjob.

The 1999 Chicago Underground will kick off on August 13th with the Midwestpremiere of Reed Paget‘s “Amerikan Passport,” winner of the top doc prizeat the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival. 16 feature films will screen duringthe seven-day festival that concludes on August 19th with the U.S. debut ofAustralian Jon Hewitt‘s feature film, “Redball.” Festival screenings thisyear will be held, for the first time, in what Wendorf calls, “an honest togod movie theater.” In past years, screenings were held in makeshiftscreening venues.

Another signal of the event’s growth is the fact that it received nearly1,000 entries this year, according to Wendorf. Among them was an anonymoussubmissions of “Raping Steven Spielberg,” a half-hour movie which has beenmaking the underground rounds in Hollywood. The movie fictionalizes arecent threat against Spielberg by a man who intended to sexually assaultthe famous filmmaker. Festival materials describe the movie as “a savagesatire of one man’s attempt to penetrate the innermost sanctum of thefamous director without adequate lubrication.”

A handful of favorites from domestic festivals round out Chicago’s featurelineup. Todd Verow‘s “The Trouble With Perpetual Deja-Vu” will screen,along with two features from Jon Reiss, “Cleopatra’s Second Husband” whichscreened at the 1998 LAIFF, and his new documentary, “Better Living ThroughCircuitry,” which screened at this year’s LAIFF. Also screening in Chicagoafter an L.A. debut is Gordon Eriksen‘s “The Love Machine.” Other featurescreenings include the U.S. premieres of Ian Kerkhof’s “Shabondama Elegy,”and Satoshi Kon‘s “Perfect Blue,” as well as showings of Suki Hawley andMichael Galinsky‘s “Radiation,” Paul McGuigan‘s “The Acid House,” ChrisWilcha‘s “The Target Shoots First,” Cass Paley “Wadd: The Life and Times ofJohn C. Holmes,” Xachery Irving‘s “American Chain Gang,” and JonathanBerman‘s “My Friend Paul.”

Also on tap is a showing of filmmaker Jon Jost‘s new digital project,“London Brief,” a retrospective of Ms. Vaginal Creme Davis‘ work, and aselection of new experimental work that will be curated by ChicagoFilmmaker‘s Patrick Friel.

[For more information, call 773-866-8660 or the visit official website at:http://www.cuff.org.]

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